Still the E-510 can do with further improvements of course but you can say that of every single DSLR in the market regardless of how little or how much it costs. The 510 was engineered like an Olympus camera by tradition of the company’s strengths and persuasion but it was developed to be manufactured and sold at a lower cost. That means it could never and was never designed to compete with models in a higher bracket or range. That’s a no-brainer of course. But having said that the difference in the resulting image quality is not as huge as the price gap may suggest and that’s where so many people can’t understand, don’t appreciate or haven’t come to know about.

The lighting condition was so low that the other two photographers were, like most others, using their external flash incessantly until they ran out of battery power and looked helpless for the rest of the night. I shot this and all other images without the need for one. A combination of understanding what you camera can do and some solid stable handling techniques are all you need.

Technical Data: EFL 60mm, f5.1, 1/250 sec, ISO 1600, -0.7EV – Olympus E-510

© Copyright Khen Lim, Zone-10, 2008. All Rights Reserved.

I always love the fight of an underdog. Time and again I find myself covering events that are also assigned to other photographers from the press and various other media organisations where I'm the lone owner of a tiny little DSLR and believe me, I don't feel any smaller.

And I love a good challenge. I love the fact that the chance is there to nail their ‘Bugatti cameras’ to the wall as hunted trophies. I revel in the notion that all of them hate my little camera, dismiss its abilities with impunity and arrogance because at the end of the day, it’s the client who views and chooses the images and that’s where the battle is won and the camera type ignored.

Whether my images are in black-and-white (most often are) or in colour, the E-510 simply excels beyond any expectations one might anticipate because of its low price. It performs far beyond what you pay for and that is where it is incredibly remarkable. By this factor alone, the E-510 is actually better value than the E-3 in all but the hands of working professionals. I stand by this fact and I know this is a controversial thing to say. Let’s have it at the ZX Discussion Forum then. 

This image of the three dancers mimicking a ‘Dream Girls’ routine, was shot at ISO 1600. The one on the left is a crop, making the right image a crop of a crop. There is no denying you can ‘feel’ if not see the noise at this ISO setting but normal eyes can’t even notice it at a standard 8x10 inch print size unless you tell them what to look for. In that sense, is the E-510 really all that ‘amateur’ a camera?

Technical Data: EFL 60mm, f5.0, 1/200 sec, ISO 1600, -0.7EV – Olympus E-510

© Copyright Khen Lim, Zone-10, 2008. All Rights Reserved.

“2.8?” the other photographer asked as he squinted to try to check out the lens I was using on the E-510. He saw no gold or red ring around the lens barrel and so it couldn't be any of the obvious brands most assume. To him, it looked like a very non-descript lens and he was mystified. Thinking like most people are prone to, there was ‘no way’ I could get around not using a flash because I had to have a very fast lens on my camera. Hence the ‘2.8’ referred to the largest possible aperture.

I knew why he was asking me this question. While he was constantly fiddling with his DSLR and flash, I was up and about shooting effortlessly. And he realised I was doing so without using any flash at all. That stumped him enough to ask particularly when I found him sweating it out with flat batteries in his external flash.